Rankings for Home vs. Internal Pages - Potential 301?
-
Hi everyone:
A site I'm working with until recently was ranking page 1 for its primary keyword. For the last month, they've dropped to page 4. One thing we've noticed is that the page that is ranking is an internal page (http://www.example.com/keyword-string) and at this point, everything ranking above us is ranking based on the root domain (http://www.competitor.com).
We've eliminated Panda, penalties, and any other obvious causes for the drop in rankings. We have similar or better page rank, external links, domain trust, etc. in comparison to the sites still ranking page 1.
We think this may be part of our problem. Has anyone else dealt with this? What did you do to change it and how did it work? We're considering eliminating the existing internal page and 301'ing to the home page. The keyword in question is the core of the business, so this is a natural change, but we're loath to lose years of investment in promoting the internal page.
Also, the site was originally optimized with the primary keyword throughout (appears in META tags, headers on multiple pages). How important is it to clear these out to make Google see the home page as most relevant?
Thanks!!
-
Thanks! If we did that, would it be best then to change some/most of the links to the home page, or will that tank our chances of getting the indented listing?
-
If this is their main keyword, I would optimize their homepage for it in addition to keeping the subpage optimized for it. You might even get an indented listing (both pages ranked for the keyword).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Pillar pages and blog pages
Hello, I was watching this video about pillar pages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db3TpDZf_to and tried to apply it to my self but find it impossible to do (but maybe I am looking at it the wrong way). Let's say I want to rank on "Normandy bike tou"r. I created a pillar page about "Normandy bike tour" what would be the topics of the subpages boosting that pillar page. I know that it should be questions people have but in the tourism industry they don't have any, they just want us to make them dream !! I though about doing more general blog pages about things such as : Places to rent a bike in Normandy or in XYZ city ? ( related to biking) Or the landing sites in Normandy ? (not related to biking) Is it the way to do it, what do you recommend ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Does you page need to be unique to rank
What I mean by unique is : Let's imagine I want to rank one "seo ranking factors." In order to compete do I need to have (in terms of design) that is totally different than everything out there or can I rank with a page that is presented in a very similar way than everything out there but with different content. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Soft 404 error for a big, longstanding 301-redirected page
Hi everyone, Years ago, we acquired a website that had essentially 2 prominent homepages - one was like example.com and the other like example.com/htm... They served the same purpose basically, and were both very powerful, like PR7 and often had double listings for important search phrases in Google. Both pages had amassed considerable powerful links to them. About 4 years ago, we decided to 301 redirect the example.com/htm page to our homepage to clean up the user experience on our site and also, we hoped, to make one even stronger page in serps, rather than two less strong pages. Suddenly, in the past couple weeks, this example.com/htm 301-ed page started appearing in our Google Search Console as a soft 404 error. We've never had a soft 404 error before now. I tried marking this as resolved, to see if the error would return or if it was just some kind of temporary blip. The error did return. So my questions are:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
1. Why would this be happening after all this time?
2. Is this soft 404 error a signal from Google that we are no longer getting any benefit from link juice funneled to our existing homepage through the example.com/htm 301 redirect? The example.com/htm page still has considerable (albeit old) links pointing to it across the web. We're trying to make sense of this soft 404 observation and any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Eric0 -
My page ranking dropped after I made it responsive
Recently, I made one of my site page responsive. It was ranking on 13th Position and after I made the page responsive, it dropped to 24 desktop and 35 on mobile rankings. I ran mobile friendly test and it said "awesome, your page is mobile friendly". Not sure, what went wrong here. Page in question is: https://www.itcontractorsuk.com/ Can someone please advice? Please Note: My site is partially responsive.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThinkWebUK0 -
After 301 redirects average rankings went down a little. Any idea?
We have changed the design of a website, from an oscommerce site to a new responsive website with customized programming. After the 301 redirects we have lost 1 to 2 positions in Google Rankings of the most visited categories. This are real data <colgroup><col span="5" width="80"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
| page | brand | page | CTR | average position |
| old | fagor | http://www.electrorecambio.es/tienda/fagor-m-41.html | 15% | 6,6 |
| new | fagor | http://www.electrorecambio.es/fagor | 13% | 7,2 |
| old | teka | http://www.electrorecambio.es/tienda/teka-m-39.html | 12% | 7,2 |
| new | teka | http://www.electrorecambio.es/teka | 9% | 8,8 |
| old | balay | http://www.electrorecambio.es/tienda/balay-m-81.html | 12% | 7,4 |
| new | balay | http://www.electrorecambio.es/balay | 11% | 8,6 |
| old | bosch | http://www.electrorecambio.es/tienda/bosch-m-44.html | 10% | 7,4 |
| new | bosch | http://www.electrorecambio.es/bosch | 8% | 11 | Edited: As this table is not shown properly I have added an image For you to check the old page you can see the old urls in the folder tienda2. For example http://www.electrorecambio.es/tienda/bosch-m-44.html can be checked in http://www.electrorecambio.es/tienda2/bosch-m-44.html I would like to know if you see any important information that could justify this drop down in rankings Thanks!!! data-webmaster-tools.jpg1 -
301 redirect or Robots.txt on an interstatial page
Hey guys, I have an affiliate tracking system that works like this : an affiliate puts up a certain code on his site, for example : www.domain.com/track/aff_id This url leads to a page where the hit is counted, analysed and then 302 redirects to my sales page with the affiliates ID in the url : www.mysalespage.com/?=aff_id. However, we've noticed recently that one affiliate seems to be ranking for our own name and the url google indexed was his tracking url (domain.com/track/aff_id). Which is strange because there is absolutely nothing on that page, its just an interstatial page so that our stats tracking software can properly filter hits. To remove the affiliate's url from showing up in the serps, I've come up with 2 solutions : 1 - Change the redirect to a 301 redirect on his track page. 2 - Change our robots.txt page to block all domain.com/track/ pages from being indexed. My question is : if I 301 redirect instead of 302, will I keep the affiliates from outranking me for my own name AND pass on link juice or should I simply block google from crawling the interstatial tracking pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0 -
Very basic - domain authority vs page authority
what does that mean and how is that information valuable? thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thirsty31 -
301 a page and then remove the 301
I have a real estate website that has a city hub page. All the homes for sale within a city are linked to from this hub page. Certain small cities may have one home on the market for a month and then not have any homes on the market for months or years. I call them "Ghost Cities". This problem happens across many cities at any point in time. The resulting city hub pages are left with little to no content. We are throwing around the idea of 301 redirecting these "Ghost City" pages to a page higher up in the hierarchy (Think state or county) until we get new homes for sale in the city. At that point we would remove the 301. Any thoughts on this strategy? Is it bad to turn 301s on and off like that? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisKolmar0